MOTHER’S DAY EVENT : Talk by Jane Taylor

Please Join us for a MOTHER’S DAY EVENT : Talk by Jane Taylor and Book Launch for Spirit Traffic: A Mother’s Journey of Self-Discovery and Letting Go.

Sunday May 8, 2022; 3pm GreenTARA Space, lower level. Kraemer & Kin service in Main Gallery.

Bio :

When C. Jane Taylor was a little girl, her mother owned the motorcycle shop, Honda of Ann Arbor. Motorcycles colored her childhood until she and her family moved to Northern Michigan and later to Vermont. At the age of 16, she went to Bard College at Simon’s Rock where she earned a BA in Literature and Music History.

She’s been a cook for a baroque orchestra, a sculptor’s assistant, a resume writer, and a yoga teacher. She started (and stopped) her own welding shop. She has repaired farm equipment under the blazing sun on the Fourth of July and decorated cakes resembling the Palace of Versailles on Bastille Day.

She is a writer, a biker, a mom, a wife, a warrior, and sometimes a bit of a chicken, but when she got the invitation from AARP to join their organization, she ripped the letter up and bought a motorcycle. And after a forty-year hiatus, she started riding again when her son graduated from college.

To celebrate his achievement and fill her impending empty nest, Jane, her husband, and son took a 10,000-mile motorcycle trek across the United States; this adventure is the subject of her new book, “Spirit Traffic: A Mother’s Journey of Self-discovery and Letting Go.”

She lives, writes, and rides in Hinesburg, Vermont with her husband John, a yoga teacher. 

SUNDAY MUSIC SUNDAY - May 15, 2022 3pm

SUNDAY MUSIC SUNDAY returns at GreenTARA Space with Music by Mary McGinniss - The Selkie Trio.

The wonderful Selkie Trio has a long history of playing music in the Burlington area. We are so delighted to have them joining us in North Hero for a Sunday of music. They weave together a blend of spacious strings, harmony, and deep rhythms from the well of rock ‘n’ roll, jazz, and Celtic song. The Trio is Mary McGinniss, Juliet McVicker, and Steve Wienert.

Join us : Sunday, May 15, 2022 3 - 5pm; in Main Gallery with drink and food offerings by Kraemer & Kin Microbrewery. Seating inside and out… Don’t forget additional parking is at the Town Library.

We are the Vessel.

FORM AND FUNCTION: WE ARE THE VESSEL

We are the vessel of what we know.  We are the open form that gets poured into by the Universe, by our environment, by one another.  We are the vessel of creative life whatever shape that takes up.

We are the vessel in which imagination takes form. We shape our needs, we create our objects… whether useful or harmful, refined or raw, open or closed…. they all come out of the emptiness of being, each a gift coming into existence.

This exhibition of weaving and pottery represents different places and times.  And the three collections have their own stories to tell from the Tea Bowls by Jeanne Claire Bisson of Romulus Craft, Washington, VT and the Rug Weavings by Diane Elliott Gayer, Burlington, VT to the 1940s collection of Clay Pots from the Southwest.

Each is an accumulation of knowledge, technique, and spirit.  Each is an embodiment of the world from which it arose.  Each carries overt and subtle meaning from the fibers found in each weaving to the clay used in each pot.  The clays, pigments, shapes, patterns, firings, finishes, and actually uses affect the energy contained by each piece whether weaving or pottery.

Form and Function: we are the Vessel.

Changing Conditions

I have been reading a book I found many years ago in London during an Open Architectural Weekend and we tried to visit the Gherkin Building, only to find that it was locked. Instead we happened into an amazing historic church, St. Andrew Undershaft. [Photo thanks to Rita A. on Foursquare]. This is where I found Sacred Spaces: Stations on a Celtic Way by Margaret Silf.

Among many things, she talks about angels as the light behind our shadow. When we are full of ego our shadows are very dark and solid, letting no light thru, our collective heavy shadows overwhelm the earth and, by extension, destroy what we know thru war and environmental degradation. Yet, as we let go of our self and become more open to the universe, the eternal light (the sun, if you want) is allowed to flow and fill our being.

In this time of devastating militarization, upheaval of homelands, and climatic crisis, to think that we can bring a fraction of light back into the world is powerful. Maybe the return of Spring is part of that reminder despite the darkness of conditions.

On a personal level, I learned that solid surfaces can break thru in unexpected ways. I was trying to get a closer look at a beaver house, or “igloo,” in the Burlington Barge Canal when suddenly the ice I was standing on gave way. I went thru up to my knees and my boots filled with water. It was an awakening I didn’t expect obviously and startling enough that I forgot what I was trying to do.

I love it when the unexpected happens and reminds me that I should pay more conscious attention to my world…. And am super grateful this had nothing to do with Great Ice 2022! Meanwhile, I want to remember that the light shines behind us even when we are in the dark.

SVAC Outing

Waiting for Great Ice 2022 to happen, and not wanting to focus on the changing ice & snow conditions in City Bay, a couple of us detoured south during those 40-degree days. We went to Manchester for an art outing at the Southern Vermont Art Center. The exhibition Hiroshige and the Changing Japanese Landscape on mokuhanga is both contemporary (curated under the guidance of Patty Hudak, a member of the Mokuhanga Sisters print collective) and classical (focusing on the work of 19th c. Japanese artist Hiroshige) works on paper. It was a treat to experience what woodblock printing can do—from the expansiveness of color to the extreme detail—and a breath of fresh air. www.svac.org

Great Ice 2022

Planning continues for the Feb 18, 19, 20 events!

Schedule includes many things - please check the website for details: www.greaticevt.org

Friday activities include fireworks, skating and bonfire; Saturday has snowshoeing at Camp Ingalls, chili cook-off, lighted rink, and (new this year) a barn dance with the Tenderbellies at the Community Hall; Sunday is the Over & Back trek to Knight Island and more skating...

All of course is weather dependent and at your own risk, so please be responsible, stay safe, and have fun.

The Islander Interview

Michael Frett of The Islander interviews the artists now at GreenTARA. Thank you for your insights into the show and interest in what we do!

January: Color and Light

In the bright light of January we are welcomed by Scott Brown’s highly painted wood panels of primary colors and Kristian Brevik’s play of illuminated life. This show is up through mid-March and viewable on F, S, S 12-6pm during Kraemer & Kin’s hours of operation. More details to follow.

Scott Brown’s panels are designed by hand, drafted on a computer, send to a cnc shop in Bristol, then returned to Grand Isle for painting and assembly. Each panel is a geometry of puzzle pieces, a variation of pattern and shape. The triptych Planet Series reaches across the boundary of space as the yellow orb revolves from one panel to the other; in Dancing, a more urban inspired panel, the dancers are contained yet breach the black grid of city streets; and in Migration, the largest piece (yet) to be installed, we see rotating rhythm of color and sound.

Kristian Brevik’s works in art and science combining them into forms that help us question the relationships between us, humans, and life-other-than-human. His whale sculptures (humpback, sperm whale, and red whale) hang and move in the Gallery air as if this were still the Champlain Sea, of 13,000 years ago, when Charlotte, the whale, was still swimming around. The narwhal and grey whale are on lamp bases, yet freely move and float through time as well.

Kristian says: I create illuminated sculptural lanterns representing the breadth of biodiversity in the living world. When lit, these lanterns reveal skeletons, colors, and patterns of the creatures they represent - they cast a warm glow, drawing the viewer in. These works encourage the consideration of these beings, their role in ecosystems, and their wellbeing in the world. www.kristianbrevik.com

Added to these “linen stretched over a metal frame” creatures are two delightful pollinators. Again reminding us of our interconnected life within the natural world.